It Starts Small

What is your ultimate goal in life? WHat do you set your ambition and motive on? What are you trying to accomplish?

This often comes to mind for me. I often ask myself what exactly are you doing and who are you doing it for. More than a year ago I set out with one goal and one purpose in my heart: I want to know Jesus.

¹⁰ I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, Philippians 3:10 NIV

Paul spoke about His priority and goal to know Christ in the third chapter of Philippians. I love how the NIV translates verse 10. It’s not flashy, it is straight to the point and purpose Paul has set his life’s purpose to be.

AS you read through Philippians, the beating, pulsating, blood pumping, heart of the letter to the Philippians is this: I want to know Christ.

DO we have the courage in us to ask God to make these five words – I want to know Christ – the driving force in our lives? If we do, they drive us the very places, when all is said and done, we will have most wanted to go in our lives. They drive us there even when the glass on our compass is cracked and we are lost in the howling desert. Even in the midst of our current season of life, they get us not to where we think we need to go, but in the end, we will have always wanted to get there.

Those five words drive us forward even when our wheels seem to be spinning in mud or when we are broken down on the backside of some desolate place of nowhere. These words find us and they drive us!

They drive us to:

the fulfillment of our callings

through the hardest times in our lives

around the worst enemy snares

over our bitterness, envy, and resentment of others

away from purposelessness even when we see no purpose

toward the future instead of circling back in a constant loop of our past.

Are you stuck in a cul-de-sac? The constant looping around and around in a woozy-head spinning loop of replaying your past over and over. All the should haves, could haves, wish you had can drive our lives into a knotted ball of resentment and regret.

Paul gives us an alternative to driving this forever loop. Imagine a moment what it must be like to find the One you comparatively know little about so vast and valuable, beautiful and transforming, lovely and pure, challenging and mysterious, that you would let go of all else to spend the rest of your life and eternity getting to know the person completely. Is Christ that for you? Is he someone you would truly let go of everything and seek to know?

I am not talking about that transitory feeling people get when they “fall in love.” In fact, that is what most people do when they receive Christ. They “fall in love,” but when the going gets tough, a wrong turn comes, the fires of affliction come, they are no longer “in love” and they return back to who they had always been. I am talking about a commitment and dedication of your life to say, Christ you are all I will ever want and I dedicate my whole life to knowing you.

Nothing is normal about the Christian life from the eyes of the world. Nothing is normal about any human being being able to truthfully say that the love of our lives, the sum of the reason for breathing, is someone we have never seen. In all of the crude and startling realities of this cruel and cold world, where the innocent suffer and the wicked prosper, we must not let anyone take from us the wonder and miracle of knowing Christ our Savior.

Who is this Christ Paul wanted to know?

¹⁵ He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn over all creation.
¹⁶ For everything was created by him,
in heaven and on earth,
the visible and the invisible,
whether thrones or dominions
or rulers or authorities—
all things have been created through him and for him.
¹⁷ He is before all things,
and by him all things hold together.
¹⁸ He is also the head of the body, the church;
he is the beginning,
the firstborn from the dead,
so that he might come to have
first place in everything.
¹⁹ For God was pleased to have
all his fullness dwell in him,
²⁰ and through him to reconcile
everything to himself,
whether things on earth or things in heaven,
by making peace
through his blood, shed on the cross.
Colossians 1:15-20

This is the Christ Paul wanted to know and throughout His letters encourages us to know.

What keeps us from knowing this Christ? The holdup, Paul tells us is the later part of Philippians 3:10,

¹⁰ My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, Philippians 3:10

We naturally want to know the Christ and the power of signs and wonders, his authoritative teaching, his effectual prayer, his healing of the sick and defeating the darkness. We want the fellowship of walking on waves with him, the multiplying of the bread and turning water into wine. But Paul knew something the Holy Spirit is challenging all of to believe.

¹⁸ I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what is the wealth of his glorious inheritance in the saints, ¹⁹ and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the mighty working of his strength. ²⁰ He exercised this power in Christ by raising him from the dead and seating him at his right hand in the heavens— Ephesians 1:18-20

Paul ties Philippians 3:10 with understanding and knowing that the power of Christ’s resurrection in reference to his physical death. Paul lived an expectant hope of dying obediently to God and being raised from the dead as Christ had been raised. Paul not only speak of the expectant raising of his physical death, but also a dying of sorts that the obedient servant of Christ does while living.

⁷ Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. ⁸ We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; ⁹ we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed. ¹⁰ We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body. 2 Corinthians 4:7-10

In verse 10, Paul writes something interesting: We always carry the death of Jesus in our body… Paul says, right now in our temporal state we are carrying the death of Jesus in our bodies. How do we do that? Paul gives four examples:

Afflicted….but not crushed
Perplexed….but not in despair
Persecuted….but not abandoned
Struck….but not destroyed

Can you see a sort of resurrection in each of these? SOmething we have experience, that nearly killed us physically or spiritually becomes the most prominent way Christ is revealed in us. Paul puts it this way:

⁷ Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. 2 Corinthians 4:7

Jump down to verse 10:

¹⁰ We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body. 2 Corinthians 4:10

We can not overlook or downplay this. We must not miss this truth!

Let us be real for a moment. We all want a prosperity gospel that promises prosperity, success and wealth. Most of us agree this sort of prosperity gospel is heresy, but we also have to be care not to believe in the extreme opposite which we can call misery gospel. This type of gospel is framing that our lives should be crucified, lived in agony suffering and martyrdom where God’s will only runs contrary to human hopes and desires. To interpret the gospel as a joyless and gory path is a complete distortion of the gospel. We are indeed called to a daily dying of our flesh, but we are called to identify with Christ, and in death is also resurrection.

None of us need to be great theologians to grasp why fellowshipping with Christ in his suffering is immensely valuable. All it takes is for us to turn to Christ in a solitary time of our own suffering, fellowshipping with him, and finding consolation in his company. Again, Paul frames it this way:

¹⁶ At my first defense, no one stood by me, but everyone deserted me. May it not be counted against them. ¹⁷ But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that I might fully preach the word and all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. 1 Timothy 4:16-17

Does that ring a bell of truth? Who else better understood what Paul was going through, than Jesus? Are you in this place? You are suffering on the inside but no one seems to understand? You spouse does not seem to get it, your children do not seem to care, your family threw their hands up and your job does not care. Jesus does!

No one wants to be socially abandoned and at the same time nothing is like the sense of Christ’s nearness in our otherwise aloneness. His presence and sustaining power is better experienced than explained. Touching his scars, as Thomas did, carves out a depth in our involvement with Jesus that may not remove all doubts, but it does settle the question: Jesus is Lord to our innermost being.

Paul repeats this truth over and over in his letters because this is one truth we can not refuse or pass over. Paul longed and yearned to take hold of God’s future in Christ in the present while Christ had taken hold of him in the past. Paul’s experience are unique to him, just as your experiences are unique to you, but there is one thing we all share with Paul:

¹² Not that I have already reached the goal or am already perfect, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. ¹³ Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, Philippians 3:12-13

We have not arrived, yet. We have not attained, yet. We have not finished, yet.

God is calling and summoning us. He’s calling the willing to brave a life that esteems knowing Christ as the greatest prize we will ever attain. Knowing Christ is what keeps us from losing heart. Knowing Christ is what keeps a hemorrhaging faith when we feel like we know nothing else.

To live is to carry the death of Christ in us so Christ can ressurect with in us.

In the season of where you are right now, fill in this sentence:

I don’t know ________________________________________________ but I do know Jesus. And the Jesus I know can be trusted with all I don’t know.

IS there truth in that statement for you? Is Jesus spoken in lip service on Sunday morning, or is Christ truly your goal and treasure you seek?